Prototype Crane Designed For Vans

A prototype crane designed by Venco Venturo Industries LLC for European-style vans made its debut at the Work Truck Show.

Brett Collins - President Venco Venturo

“This is a total prototype,” Venco Venturo Brett Collins said during the show, which took place March 1-4 in Indianapolis. “But given the reaction that we had just in a day and half I can tell you this is going to be going into production very, very shortly.”

Collins, whose company is based in Cincinnati, said this is the first time Venco Venturo has brought a “pure concept” to the show. “We usually bring marketable products with sale prices and we’re ready to take orders, and it’s all done. And this time we’re like, let’s just bring a concept and see how this thing works and test the market.”

He noted that European-style vans are cutting into a lot of traditional businesses for service bodies and cranes bodies.

“They’re been selling this truck (van) in Europe for 30 years and they’ve got all kinds of different applications for it,” Collins said. “When we were looking at this idea that is what we looked at: Europe. How are they using these thing in Europe. And there’s so many markets. We’re just starting to scratch the surface.”

A main feature of the new crane is that it has a horizontally articulating boom. Another is that it has dual base and tower mounts — in other words, it bolts to the floor and to the roof of the van.

“It’s a bolt-on application,” Collins said. “It does not require floor reinforcement like a base mount would — much faster installation, easier for the upfitters. (It) uses the van structure itself.”

The prototype crane is rated at 1,000 pounds at full capacity, said Ian Lahmer, marketing director for Venco Venturo Industries LLC. “And right now we’re looking at 750 pounds rated at six feet,” Lahmer added.

Another small crane set up in the van was the 1,500-pound capacity model CE1500FB. Already in production, it typically mounts on a service truck, inside a utility body or on a flatbed.

Ian Lahmer with Venco Van Crane Prototype

“So basically what we decided is how do we make it work in a van,” Collins said. “Well, we had to shorten up the boom a little bit for clearance issues. We had to take away the telescopic part of it and we had to change the base mounting a little bit (and) mount it on the floor.”

Both cranes use some of the same components, such as winches. However, in other cases, the differing applications of the cranes required distinctly different parts. For example, the base of the CE1500FB didn’t rotate easily enough with fiber bushings, “so we had to go to roller bearings,” Collins said.

But generally speaking, when Venco Venturo works on a new model, it tries to incorporate components from existing models, “just for efficiency of production,” Collins said.

At the Work Truck Show, the prototype was affixed at the back end of a mid-roof van, although it will also fit high-roof vans and enclosed service bodies, such as Knapheide’s KUV, and similar models from Reading, Royal, and CSV.

“We hadn’t even thought about that,” Collins said. “And then we’ve had those manufacturers approach and say, ‘We love this product for this application as well. What do you think?’ I’m like, ‘Hey great idea.’ We’ll have to do some testing, adapt it to fit, make some modifications but that’s the beauty of what we have. It’s very easily height adjustable by us as a manufacturer. We might do something with a telescopic-type mount that would be adjustable for different heights. Like I said, this is still a concept at this stage. But we move very very fast.”

Collins said at the show that there are still a few kinks to work out with the prototype, such as designing it to fit in other van models.

“And we want to do more duty-cycle testing and longevity testing,” Collins said. “We’ve tested it at full capacity to make sure that the van structure can hold up to it, and it can. It only flexed 40,000th or an inch when we did that. But we haven’t done the duty-cycle test. It flexed 40,000th of an inch but what happens if we flex it 2,000 times? Is this truck going to hold up?”

Collins said he expected that heavy-duty testing to take a few weeks. But once it’s done, he’s predicting the crane will be a winner, based on the reaction at the show.

“We’re convinced that this is going to go market,” Collins said. “We’re going to definitely develop it for the Ford Transit first and then we’ll take things one step at a time after that.”